The Information Literacy Land of Confusion - Teaching With Wikipedia:Teaching With Wikipedia
The above link is to an article on teaching with Wikipedia. I recommend it to any teacher curious about the worth of Wikipedia in the classroom. The first thing that struck me was that it mentions Wikipedia being actually quite accurate; and even goes on to compare it with Encarta and the Encyclopedia Britannica. This surprised me but it seems to make sense. People have put a lot of work into the site and take it very seriously. There are people who monitor and change things to make the entries more valid. Having said that though, I wouldn't necessarily want it to be a resource for any or my students. In some cases, there are inaccuracies and I'm sure the content of many of the entries is simply incomplete. What I do like about it, is that it's good for an initial introduction to any topic. I use it myself all the time. In fact, the other day I was reading my textbook for Secondary English Methods and the chapter kept reffering to the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It referred to it so much that it affected my understanding of the chapter. So I looked the novel up in Wikipedia and quickly scanned the entry to get an idea of the plot. It helped.
In class I would encourage students to use Wikipedia to get a bit familiar with a topic. I would not let them use it as a resource for any essays though. In this article, however, they mention activities using Wikipedia that I thought were great. Essentially they involved getting students to think critically about what they see in Wikipedia entries and compare them with other articles and resources. On the Wikipedia site itself, students would be encouraged to take out false statements, correct inaccurate information and/or provide proper citations where they might be missing. The article also mentions Wikipedia as a good way for students to detect biases. The article Teaching With Wikipedia is well worth the read. There are a lot of insights and ideas of how to incorporate Wikipedia into the classroom.
Technology in Schools
Most schools around the world have implemented technology in some way. With this comes policies concerning the use of all the equipment. New Brunswick is, in my mind, ahead of the game but that doesn't come without problems. As I went searching for articles that might help policy makers dealing with the usage of technology in schools I came across two things that caught my eye. The first was a letter to the editor (which I haven't added) talking about the use of Apple products instead of Windows because of the lack of viruses, crashes, etc. Viruses and system crashes are major problems for schools. Changing to Mac or Linux (or whatever else might be out there) could be an answer.
The other problem is replacing all the equipment. Some schools like Nashwaaksis Middle School provide students with their own laptops. That's absolutely wonderful but eventually these brand new laptops won't be new anymore. Schools will be faced with replacing millions of dollars worth of computers. One step around this is allowing students to bring their own and letting them connect to the wireless network with whatever they might have (Windows, Mac, Linux, Blackberry, etc). I found a school that is doing this right now. They are the Niles Township High School and they have done up three pages of policies concerning this. There is a link below. It might be something useful for other policy makers to see what other schools are doing with the same issues they face. Niles Township High School Policy
Geoff, Great that you found this... I think the points you make are very timely. I'd love for my students to be able to use their own laptops. Most have better technology than the school has available. I'll be sharing this link with Kevin McCluskey.
Sandra
The above link is to an article on teaching with Wikipedia. I recommend it to any teacher curious about the worth of Wikipedia in the classroom. The first thing that struck me was that it mentions Wikipedia being actually quite accurate; and even goes on to compare it with Encarta and the Encyclopedia Britannica. This surprised me but it seems to make sense. People have put a lot of work into the site and take it very seriously. There are people who monitor and change things to make the entries more valid. Having said that though, I wouldn't necessarily want it to be a resource for any or my students. In some cases, there are inaccuracies and I'm sure the content of many of the entries is simply incomplete. What I do like about it, is that it's good for an initial introduction to any topic. I use it myself all the time. In fact, the other day I was reading my textbook for Secondary English Methods and the chapter kept reffering to the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It referred to it so much that it affected my understanding of the chapter. So I looked the novel up in Wikipedia and quickly scanned the entry to get an idea of the plot. It helped.
In class I would encourage students to use Wikipedia to get a bit familiar with a topic. I would not let them use it as a resource for any essays though. In this article, however, they mention activities using Wikipedia that I thought were great. Essentially they involved getting students to think critically about what they see in Wikipedia entries and compare them with other articles and resources. On the Wikipedia site itself, students would be encouraged to take out false statements, correct inaccurate information and/or provide proper citations where they might be missing. The article also mentions Wikipedia as a good way for students to detect biases. The article Teaching With Wikipedia is well worth the read. There are a lot of insights and ideas of how to incorporate Wikipedia into the classroom.
Technology in Schools
Most schools around the world have implemented technology in some way. With this comes policies concerning the use of all the equipment. New Brunswick is, in my mind, ahead of the game but that doesn't come without problems. As I went searching for articles that might help policy makers dealing with the usage of technology in schools I came across two things that caught my eye. The first was a letter to the editor (which I haven't added) talking about the use of Apple products instead of Windows because of the lack of viruses, crashes, etc. Viruses and system crashes are major problems for schools. Changing to Mac or Linux (or whatever else might be out there) could be an answer.
The other problem is replacing all the equipment. Some schools like Nashwaaksis Middle School provide students with their own laptops. That's absolutely wonderful but eventually these brand new laptops won't be new anymore. Schools will be faced with replacing millions of dollars worth of computers. One step around this is allowing students to bring their own and letting them connect to the wireless network with whatever they might have (Windows, Mac, Linux, Blackberry, etc). I found a school that is doing this right now. They are the Niles Township High School and they have done up three pages of policies concerning this. There is a link below. It might be something useful for other policy makers to see what other schools are doing with the same issues they face.
Niles Township High School Policy
Geoff, Great that you found this... I think the points you make are very timely. I'd love for my students to be able to use their own laptops. Most have better technology than the school has available. I'll be sharing this link with Kevin McCluskey.
Sandra